Fishing for Yin
by Araeph
Summary: The Fire Nation learns what it means to live without the Moon. Zutara.
1. Chapter 1

**Fishing for Yin**

by Araeph

 **Summary:** The Fire Nation learns what it means to live without the Moon.

[For Zutara Week, Day 1: Happenstance.]

* * *

 **Prologue**

It burned through the northern sky, an echo of the fire that would race across the heavens on the hated day of Sozin. The thickset wall of ice did not collapse; it shattered out the back, exploding into a rain of missiles that rained down on the water tribe men.

Sokka had said to go inside. But Yue couldn't bear to leave her people.

Every day of her young existence, the princess had been sheltered by the mighty arms of her father, by the master of water, by the spirits who had made her cry with life. But today, even Tui and La were encircled by danger as they felt the balance of the world about to shift. Like a breath of arctic air, their protection blew across her forehead, held her face in a cold parental grasp, and was gone. For the first time, she wasn't safe. For the first time, she had broken free of everything.

"Yue! Stop! I promised your father I'd protect you!"

The princess stole one look back at the clumsy, brave young man who had not yet let his intelligence win out over his kind foolishness. (She hoped it never would.)

A memory welled up before her eyes of Sokka standing before her father. The chief, reaching out to touch the foreheads of the young men; the red pigment dripping in front of their eyes. The vision subsided, only to reveal an angry reality that pelted her on all sides: snow piled on ash, fur-hooded men prying open merciless armor; the gray, red, and black perfect imprints that the tank treads left on snow.

She raised her head and looked over the whole city. For every waterway visible to the naked eye, Yue envisioned one, two, three branches off of it—the entire network of water, hers, mapped in her mind even before her first moon time. She knew Sokka well enough by now to have picked up on his gift for reading maps. But with his eyes on her, he would easily lose his way. She pressed her lips together, gave him a firm look of good-bye, and threaded her way through a doorway, onto a walkway crowded with people who were bundled together in their panic.

In the streets, everyone was suffering. On the canals, there was no princess; only two pairs of hands that could help. Yue gathered up a screaming child, hushed a woman driven out of her wits by the sight of her husband's body, and rushed them both to safety. She glanced back; Sokka had just caught sight of her again. Time to vanish back under a snowy arch and lose him.

She made it off the bridge, only to hear a deep, long hiss that bloomed into a roar, and then a world of driving, unbearable light.

The cannonball died abruptly when it hit the bridge, steaming itself out and causing the whole structure to slide sideways. But the heat it carried with it had left a wake of devastation.

That day, the Water Tribe learned that even the princess's white hair could turn black.

Sokka dropped to his knees in shame at not being able to save her—her and his mother. The failure was one and the same.

Zhao, who thought he had conquered, slew the spirit of the moon.

The Avatar came.

The ocean rose up.

Up, up, up!—La gathered the power of the waves. They rose in the west as the pitiless sun rose in the east.

The sky turned white with the morning, hours later. But by then, Katara was no longer a waterbender. And Prince Zuko no longer had a nation to return to.


	2. Chapter 2

Thanks so much to my reviewers! There's just a little more waiting until we find out what's happened to all of our team. Let me know what you think!

* * *

 **[For Zutara Week, Day 2: Vigil.]**

Aang could hear singing around him, and he wasn't sure how.

There was wailing, too…laments, petitions, imprecations, prayers. But La had muffled it all when she had entombed him in water. At first, his anger and hers had fused together, joined in the outrage over the murder of a spirit who had sacrificed everything to become a mortal. When La had cleared the Water Tribe shores of the oily ships, stripped the ash from its sky, Aang had felt the rightness of the deed channeled through him. The Spirit of the Ocean was picking up the waves like a carpet, and shaking the coal-filled remnants out like dust into the wind. They was a mighty push that might have come only from Aang (it was so hard to tell), just enough to send the ships spinning away.

And then—then La had swept up control of it all and sliced up a ship like a good morning's hunt.

Aang reeled back, appalled at what he—they—had done. His anger was still there; it still meant something to have seen a spirit murdered. Yet it was nothing compared to his horror at what had happened to the people on the ship. And that was still more nothing compared to the vast, inexorable will of the ocean. La's thoughts poured off her in pulses, pressed in on his tiny bubble of air.

 _Tui is gone. My heart is gone. My half is gone. I am gone. They will be no more._

Aang's arms windmilled frantically as he tried to halt the tide. _Please, spirit, stop—spirit, no—spirit, forgive them!_ He tried, and he tried, and he ached from trying, and he was furious from trying, and all it got him was the preservation of his own thoughts from being lost like bubbles under the ocean.

Aang was sunk—again. Trapped, encased—again.

He could only watch and try to hang on as his spiritual energy, still running hot, fueled the channels of hot water that propelled La forward, that branched into every last current it could touch. For a moment, a tiny happy thought nudged at him: he could feel everything, every last whirling, dancing, beautiful thing in the deep. It was everything the Avatar State was supposed to be, and nothing it should ever have been used for.

He could feel each flying fish as it left the water; every last wriggle of the sea prunes while their bellies wriggled through the drifting cold of the polar north. He could feel the seaweed flowing, miles and miles of it; he knew every drop of liquid absorbed by bright sponges in a warm, mellow patch of the ocean. Every clink of the hermit crab shedding its shell gave off the tiniest vibration. Tiny, but still the ocean trembled the slightest bit. La drove scores of cuttlesharks out to seek prey, and reveled in their feasting; she picked affectionately at barnacles and whirled a necklace of fish eggs up into the sunlight.

All the while, she was moving west, raising and raising and raising the water. They drained the Serpent's Pass and carried its bounty far out to sea; and they gained speed with every minute she had him under control.

Was this all his fault? Half his fault? Even now, trying to stave off La's oppressive spiritual force, he thought and thought about it and couldn't come up with an answer. La's call at the spirit oasis had been answered by something pulling deeply within him—or had it been she who'd answered him? Spirits perceived time differently than humans, and the Avatar's spirit was no different.

 _Ours,_ said La, caressing tendrils of energy across Aang's face, seeking him, inviting his strength again to join completely with her own. It would be done, and done completely. It must.

Other mortals would have found it easier to drown. Aang was made from air. No matter how much the ocean enticed him, soothed him, muffled every last cry of terror from the ships that skidded past them on razor-sharp waves—his mind kept afloat. His self could still surface, even when the humans outside were nothing more than a pinprick.

Aang shook his head, cleared it again, and reminded himself that they all weren't that small.

They had left the bulk of the Earth Kingdom behind as the waves funneled them west. Aang knew what was coming; La had brushed his mind many times, coaxing, then demanding enough energy for the final assault.

A white wavefront boiled in front of them as he felt the dark water chase the currents, flatten them onto the waiting rock. Sand blew up from a shoreline and sent the fish spiraling round and round.

Ember Island.

Tiny people, more insignificant to La than fishes, swirled too.

Roku's Island.

The Ocean Spirit was bleeding vengeance as if she were the one dying; great rivers of agony ripped at the dark monster and torrential grief streamed off of her. The empty ache left by Tui was one dry hollow. So much like the Caldera.

 _Fill it. Fill it. Then the hurt will be gone._

(Even spirits can practice self-deception.)

The people were growing ever tinier in Aang's mind's eye. From pinpricks to grains of sand to dust motes. He pushed, pushed back and widened the bubble inside La, and still it did no good.

 _Wait. Not push…not_ only _push._ Push and pull. The rhythm of all waterbending. The music that La had lost.

Words from the thousands of people about to meet their ends dispersed soundlessly into the air outside, from the tiniest sigh to the loudest, throatiest bellow. But music was different. It made itself part of the air when all the words were lost; part life and part spirit, it traveled in deep places, even through raging water. As if from far away, yet still somehow clear in his thoughts, Aang heard the soft, even note of a horn. He focused on the rhythm. The spaces where the breaths were became pull. The music itself was push. He expanded his chest, breathed, exhaled, pushed and pulled—but wasn't it fire that came from the breath?—and gathered the air prison in a tight ball around him.

La lost her grip. Aang slid out of her mouth and into the air for the first time all night.

He was too late to stop the deluge into the Caldera. And now that he could see the people—still small, but growing larger—only thing in this mind was the face of the banished prince.

 _You've killed my country! My nation! My people_!

He had thought their being on opposite sides of a war would be difficult, but not necessarily impossible. There was still the hope of friendship, the tiny flicker of peace that had passed through them between the time Aang had offered the truce and the time it had been rejected.

Now, the gulf was too large ever to be breached again.

Except…

 _You've killed my country! My nation! My people!_

The voice that had screamed out in howling, desperate agony was not Zuko's; it was his own.

The Avatar State brightened, whited out his vision as he pivoted in midair, unleashed a whirlwind, entwined La's watery body with his own hurricane.

Finally, finally, La was stopped. The Avatar held her, locked in the embrace of an enemy instead of the lover she desired. Neither won. Neither lost. Meanwhile, the whirling wind and air moved the fabric that made up the world until it was thin, threadbare, translucent, all but nothing.

The Avatar was entwined in the arms of La, as she was entangled with his. Their arms snaked around each other, neither gaining ground, neither retreating, their struggle a constant storm of sound against the slowly submerging Fire Nation capital. It tore at the connection between Avatar and Aang, finally snapping the cord and sending Aang's spirit up, up and away into the spirit world.

La watched him go, then turned her pitiless eyes onto the empty volcano. If it sank slowly, instead of quickly, that was nothing to her.

* * *

Four years later, the banished prince found Aang again.

 _I didn't come alone_ , said Zuko, and Aang's heart hammered at the flash of blue behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

**[For Zutara Week, Day 3: Clandestine.]**

* * *

It was the nonbenders who had saved the Four Nations, more than anyone else. When the moon had winked out and the tides pushed west, when the earthbent channels were left bare of liquid, rank mud filling what had been crucial waterways, they had banded together. And they'd banded other people together, too. Firebenders were still looked upon as marked by the spirits, but those of Fire Nation descent who were not, as the old master said, cursed with burning, could find work hand in hand with men from Ba Singe Se, women from Kyoshi, and even the Southern Water tribe children who were all too quickly growing up.

Bending had become something of a hidden art in the time following the catastrophic rampage of La. With the Fire Islands practically collapsed into the ocean, those who had fought the war abroad had retreated into small, tightly-packed groups, or else scattered like sparks, turning to pillage and highway robbery to survive. It was only logical, the entire world thought, to blame the Fire Nation for what had happened. Even the firebenders caught themselves thinking it, deep in the night with no moon rising. Earthbenders were free to use their talent—indeed, their military was beginning a slow but steady advance to retake the new Fire Colonies, as the latter fought tooth and nail to preserve the tatters of their once great nation. Yet rather than being viewed as an intrinsic part of one's soul, bending was now something separable—temporary—perhaps only granted by the spirits on a whim and able to be taken away, so easily.

The airbenders had been exterminated. The Water Tribe had lost their own unique talent. And the mere mention of firebending produced harsh whispers to be silent from the fearful and the vengeful. Who knew what would happen to earthbenders—to bending itself—when all was said and done?

It was too early to talk of building a new and better world. The crags and fissures of the old one had not yet ceased to bleed. But there was always life to get back to, homes to preserve, children to keep in safety and instruct in the ways of wisdom—wherever that might lie—and men to welcome home from the war.

As they said on Kyoshi Island: how the sea serpent turns. Or they had said it, when there still was an Unagi about.

"There they are again." Sokka wearily scratched an itch on the back of his neck where the sun had beat down a little too long. "What do you think they'll offer this time?"

Suki arms folded over her breastplate. "Not enough, as always. We can't spare any more, Sokka, not even to take on extra hands for labor. It's awful that they came all this way for nothing—"

"They have nothing back where they came from either." Sokka's mouth pulled into a grimace as he watched the forlorn canoes pull into the harbor. "They're our people—kind of. Not that they weren't arrogant. Or close-minded. Or kind of sexist, and I _know_ you hate that—"

Suki quietly put an arm on his shoulder. "It doesn't mean they deserved to lose their culture."

Sokka eyed the Northern Water Tribe men who were helping each other out of the boats. "Yeah, well, neither did we."

When the Fire Nation had attacked the Southern Water Tribe first, beaten their benders back again and again, raided and ransacked and murdered their way from Hakoda's ancestors to his wife, the North had fallen silent. No, worse than silent—the South had heard all too clearly the sound of the insurmountable ice wall being raised, separating the doomed from the sheltered ones. Left on their own, the Southern tribe had been weaned of its reliance on male-only fighting, on waterbending as a means of survival, on trading and marrying only with its own. Blue robes had adorned the girls of Kyoshi Island for generations, and now, where the North was perishing, now the South had flourished. Unable to keep up their mighty blind walls, unable even to keep their largest buildings upright, the Northern Water Tribe had broken up. Some of them sought a new life among the machines of the Northern Air Temple; others began to accept a life of subsistence rather than luxury and refused to leave. Still others had braved the deadly waters to beg the South for help.

The only help they truly got was from the water. For, though the power to command the waves was lost, the sea remembered its own. The uncertain, tideless currents were restless, violent, and unpredictable to humans. But those who had Water Tribe blood in their veins could sail smoothly across the spirit-damned expanse between the nations. It was how most from the north ended up getting work—guiding ships to safe harbor by way of the blood in their veins.

 _Our strength comes from the spirit of the moon; our life comes from the spirit of the ocean._

The South had learned. The South had adapted, and the alliances it had forged (even those that were still in the making) held fast. There were no benders in the South to be suspicious of—save one, who was currently indulging in slow-boiling resentment at being kept under wraps. That, their friendship with neutral Kyoshi, and Sokka's much-vaunted "Water Tribe ingenuity", had pushed their tribe back into something like prominence. Standing out was not the order of the day in this freshly broken world, but growing was; adapting was. Suki looked proudly at the man who had proven himself a master of both.

Before the ripples from the boats had touched the shoreline, Suki noticed movement in the trees. She nudged Sokka in the side. "Look."

"Yeah, there are way too many of them to—"

"Behind them. In the trees."

"Ohhh, yeah. That's a really huge owl-cat nest, isn't it? I didn't know their hunting grounds were—"

"Sokka, your sister's here."

Pause.

"Say _what_?"

"'She's here, and she's moving behind the trees. I can see her, even if you can't." Her nudge dug slightly harder beneath his ribs. "Someone's behind in his stealth classes, Mister. You should have spotted that."

"Hey! I'm so stealthy I surprise _myself_ when I go someplace!" A sneaky look came over her boyfriend before he sashayed back the way he had come, boomerang in hand.

Suki shook her head. It was good to have someone with a sense of humor around, these days. Even Sokka's particular brand it—or his particular brand of seriousness that amounted to much the same thing.

He hadn't gotten over Yue. Not remotely. But he had been healing.

That left Suki to face the men in faded blue, dragging their limbs toward the shore, many a head going prematurely gray. And now she had to tell them to go. Her people and Sokka's lived, yes; had enough to be content with, yes; but only just. Not enough to keep the northerners with full bellies. And every season, there were more arriving.

"Gentlemen." Casting a quick glance at Kyoshi's statue for guidance, Suki straightened her posture, extending the fans that were comforting weights at her sides. While Sokka was her partner in trade, and in…other pursuits…she was always clear on one thing: Suki was in command of greeting anyone who came to her island. The village mayor could settle disputes, but intimidation—well, he could hardly muster it. More than once, she had taught those who sought to prey on Kyoshi the difference between neutrality and weakness.

There seemed to be no head, no chief of the pack this time, and that alone was troubling. When a water tribe began to lose cohesion, it signaled the beginning of the end. Community was their way of life, and now—

"We're willing to work," the youngest burst out, while a thin-faced, graying man tried to speak over him. Unbelievably, it was the elder whose claim was the more braze: offering shelter was Kyoshi's _obligation_ as an ally of the Water Tribe.

The men in blue were halfway up the beach by the time she was able to get a word in edgewise. So close to the water, she dared not challenge them—Sokka could deride and dismiss all he wanted, but no one messed with La's blood. But here, on land, they were in her custody. And it was about time she let them know it.

"Girls! Now!"

With barely a sigh from the pine trees to mark their jump, the warriors of Kyoshi leaped into formation. A few northerners, who had obviously been waterbenders in the time before— _that_ —put their hands up reflexively in fighting postures.

Then they looked around, lost like orphans in an empty city, as they remembered all too swiftly how the waves would not obey them.

Suki would have rather beat them up honorably than see such an expression on their faces. But she had no choice. She planted her feet in a fighting stance.

"You need to move on, strangers," she said. "There's no room for you here in Kyoshi."

It got harder every time for her to say that, but Suki's voice was as steady as stone.

Predictably, they protested—the young one tried to fight. And had gotten his behind punted back into the water before he realized what had hit him. The fact that it was heartbreaking and gut-wrenching and awful, to set those men back out on boats with nothing more than a few days' provisions, was something Suki had learned to stare in the face. Someday in the future, she promised herself, there would be more hands, fewer hungry mouths, another way to take the northmen in.

The waves barely rippled as the men of Water Tribe drew their boats heavily back into the surf and vanished like ghosts over the horizon.

Suki was grateful for the distraction when Sokka's yelp rent the air, and a shrill, "I found her!" resulted in what appeared to be a wrestling match with two leaf monsters in the bracken.

"You didn't find me, Sokka; I heard Suki pointing me out!"

"Yes, but she didn't say _which_ bush you'd be behind. I get points!"

"Points for stumbling around until you knocked heads with me? And it was a tree, not a bush."

"Points for being an ingenious, stealthy tracker who can still—"

"Try to tickle me again and the nunchucks will come out!"

"AHEM!" Suki called impatiently. The leaf warriors halted their contest long enough for two pairs of blue eyes to emerge from the greenery. "I could use you both—yes, you, too, Stealth Guy." She nodded over toward the bay. "I think those men are coming back."

"What makes you say—" Sokka leapt from the cover of the shrubs, all business now, and took out a spyglass that he kept on it. "You're right; there's something on the horizon. Except it's—wait, it can't be— _is that a metal ship_?"

Those words caused his sister to abandon her newfound training at last—the regimen Suki had put her through at Katara's insistence never quite being enough for the former waterbender. But the words "metal ship" were enough to goad old memories back to the surface and stick there. Suki could almost see Katara's thoughts taking her back to when the world and her bending were still whole.

The Southern Water Tribe had made many advancements in the past year—none approaching enough metalwork to create seaworthy craft. Yet there it was, drawing nearer and nearer. Iron. It must belong to the…Suki steeled her thoughts…to the _former_ Fire Nation. But who would be so insane as to brave La's wrath after his entire nation had been cursed?

"Ha," said Katara. "I bet it's Zuko."

* * *

Out of the still-mourning seas, the Fire Prince and his weather-beaten crew emerged. The sun was setting by the time they fully disembarked, and yet there was something—something strange about the way they bore themselves. No, not strange— _familiar_ , but from memory. These were not the leaderless, defeated, forgotten faces of the Water Tribe. Nor did their mouths wrench down in hatred or defiance.

These were men with a nation. These were men with a purpose. Suki didn't know where they had gotten it, but she stayed Sokka's hand on his boomerang.

Half out of reflex, Katara raised her arms at the sight of the scarred Fire Nation royal striding down the gangplank. His men fell in behind him as one—a small thing, and yet how little order there still was in the world.

Suki scoured the prince's face for the bitterness she expected to be there. If it was, she couldn't see it, consumed and blazing as it was by the sheer _drive_ she found instead. Where he had been a man on a mission, now the mission had taken the man.

Still, she did not raise her fans in self-defense.

The prince fixed his eyes on her for only a moment, long enough to nod to her in acknowledgment, leader to leader. Astonishingly, it was at the statue of Kyoshi that his gazed stopped next, before he reeled back at the sight of Sokka and Katara.

The latter's hands were firmly on her hips. She looked no happier for having been unintentionally right.

"Well," Katara scowled. "Fancy meeting you here."

"You, too…waterbender."

A direct and flagrant jab that made even Sokka reach for his club—and almost immediately retracted it when the prince held up one hand. "You're a waterbender. It's not an insult. Whether or not the ocean answers your call, it's what you are. Even I know that. And stop looking at me like I've grown another head."

"If you had grown any head at all, it'd be a miracle!" Katara retorted.

The prince's shoulders sank briefly; then he gathered his composure. "Look, we've both lost things in this war that we wish we hadn't. But I'm not here to dwell on that right now. I'm here to save my country—and maybe yours."

Katara swallowed, fought back tears. "You can't save anything without hope."

The corner of his mouth tightened just a bit. "You're right. But maybe hope isn't just a person."

"He was your hope, too—your way of getting your honor back! You told me that when you captured me!"

"I," and here the prince briefly pinched the bridge of his nose. "Things have changed. You might be—anyway, it doesn't matter."

"You're right." Sokka's voice was hard and cold. "It doesn't matter. This is all your fault anyway. You should never have come to our shores—north _or_ south. I don't know how you made it here, because if you ask me the ocean should have drowned you first of everyone."

"It wasn't me! Zhao—"

"You were part of it! All of you. Every last firebender who invaded a sovereign nation. And now she's dead!"

And there it was, the old pain acting up again and freezing out his good sense. Zuko didn't have to ask who _she_ was; wherever such stories were told, Yue's death personified the passing of the moon.

Sokka turned his back and marched away; he'd given his answer. Katara raised an eyebrow, ready to back him, but not as angry as she could have been. Everything about their body language said _no_.

But this was Suki's village. And as she looked from the prince, to her dojo, to the two who had become her family, she realized that as many difficult choices as she'd left behind, there was always one more lurking over the next hill.

 _The people of the Earth Kingdom are proud and strong. They can endure anything as long as they have hope._

With one smooth motion, Suki's fans folded in. She gave the prince a nod of respect. Determination like that didn't come along every day, and for that, she would give him what he asked for.

"The village council is convening tomorrow," she said impassively, just a hint of warning in her eyes. "You will be allowed to speak. I hope you can hold your own at a war meeting."


	4. Chapter 4

[For Zutara Week, Day 4: Rue.]

* * *

"You're in my way, peasant."

"Yeah. I do that."

Sokka was elbowed to the side before he had even registered the prince's movement. He rubbed his aching ribs resentfully. "That's the third time today! Look, can you just tell us your no-doubt-nefarious plan and skedaddle along where someone will actually listen to you?"

"No one has listened before. Maybe this time they will." Pale hands clenched and unclenched beneath the leather armor, and Sokka took a moment to appreciate the quality. It was no substitute for the gold-collared plate that the banished prince had worn before, but it was a very good approximation. Perhaps it had been too damaged to—no, wait. Sokka looked the prince up and down again. Zuko was taller, broader about the chest and shoulders than he'd been the previous year.

The thought of a depraved fire monster, the _son_ of the most deprave fire monster of all time, actually having something as normal and human as a growth spurt momentarily threw Sokka for a loop.

"Huh," was all he said, and the prince looked at him like he'd just squawked in penguin-ese before disappearing through the doorway. Following him in, Sokka scratched his chin where his goatee-in-training was beginning to show. "So, where's you're uncle? I bet he could—oof!"

The prince had halted abruptly, causing Sokka to plow into him. For a moment, Sokka could actually _feel_ the heated anger radiating off the prince's rigid form. "He's not here."

"Wait, so he's—"

"He's _not here_." Zuko took two agitated paces forward until he was standing fully in the council room. The first of the elders had yet to meet them. "Not everyone who participated in the Siege of the North was found."

"And you looked." Sokka was well aware, from the wound left by his own missing father, that making that statement into a question would have been inviting the prince to crisp him into a pile of ash right then and there.

A curt nod was his only answer.

"Me, too."

Zuko half-glanced back at him.

"My dad," Sokka clarified. "We sent message after message, but we don't know what happened to him. He was doing reconnaissance in something called the Serpent's Pass and—well, La scooped up all the water for miles and dragged it out to sea." He fought to make sure his voice didn't crack. "The other men returned, but he and Uncle Bato—his righthand man—never made it back. I still wonder, sometimes."

"Yeah."

Both young men shifted around awkwardly at the unexpected common ground.

Sokka decided to give what he felt was a very manly and unemotional shrug. "Where is everyone, anyway? I mean, I know no one likes firebenders these days—well, not that a lot of people ever did—but Suki and I have been working real hard on the whole togetherness and cooperativity thing the past few months."

Zuko said nothing, and then, a moment later, "Suki."

Sokka raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, what about her?"

"Nothing. It's just I never knew her name." He glanced at the sun, which had just set behind the tall, green-draped statue. "You can stop wasting your time trying to babysit me. They won't be coming."

"What? But we specified the time and the place and—"

"—and the _person_?" Zuko said acidly. "Trust me. I've had this reaction before. Worse, too." His head tilted reluctantly toward the opposite doorway, as if despite his negative attitude, he couldn't quite wrestle away that futile, lingering hope. Still finding no one, he scoffed and turned around, barging past Sokka once more. "I shouldn't have expected anything different. This was a complete waste of time."

A higher, sharper voice spoke at his back. "An 'excuse me' wouldn't hurt, you know."

The prince whipped around, his still spotless phoenix plume lashing the ruined side of his face. Hands on her hips, Sokka's contentious sister stared at the pair of them. Her scrutinizing glance went to Zuko's eyes, then abruptly up and down, as if she, too, had noticed the change in height. _Poor Katara_ , Sokka thought, _forever doomed to be the short one of the group_.

Wait, the _group?_ Now that was just nonsense.

"You're—" there was that look again, those penetrating eyes on the prince "—sort of the same."

The prince drew back, obviously deciding to take offense. "What is _that_ supposed to mean?"

Her hands came off her hips and wrapped around a length of metal chain she always carried with her. "It means what I said. I don't know what you're here for, Zuko, but the council isn't coming. You'll have to make do with me."

Zuko gave her a withering look. "How long have you been training with that, a month? A season? If I wanted a mediocre fighter to accompany me, I'd just ask your brother."

"Hey!"

Katara's eyes widened in fury. "You think that just because I've lost my bending that I'm useless."

"No, I think you relied on it so much you're still thinking with it." He eyed the chain whip. "Circular movements, turning defensive energy into offense. Same principle."

"That's right. You yourself said I would never stop being a waterbender. Well, who says I even have to?" She hefted the silvery chain over her shoulder. "Come a little closer, we'll see if you can match me."

Sokka rolled his eyes. "Fighting in the council chambers? Really, guys?"

At that, Prince Zuko smirked. "Clearly, this one has not been to a council of any sort."

Before Sokka could retort, there was a rustle of silk in the doorway. Suki appeared, makeup gone and fans secured in her belt.

"Bad news," she said to Katara. "The elders can't stall them for long. We'll have to be out of here in an hour."

Sokka and Zuko looked at each other, baffled, then eyed Katara, who blushed furiously.

"Um," she said, "I might have, sort of, forgotten to tell you about, well he was provoking me!" she finished defensively.

The prince raised an eyebrow. "You sort of might have forgotten to tell us about what?"

"The council," Suki said with quiet determination. "I'm sure you thought they deserted you, but they didn't. They've been holding off some Earth Kingdom agents who've been looking for Prince Zuko. Everyone's searching for you, fire boy, all the world over. We don't have the strength of Ba Sing Se, so we can't challenge them—just delay them long enough to see what you're made of."

She looked from Sokka to Katara. "Well? Has he turned over a new leaf?"

The siblings looked at each other and shrugged.

Suki hit her forehead and sighed in frustration. "Does he at least have a workable plan?"

Sokka held up a finger. "He's Prince Zuko, so I'd have to say no."

"You haven't even heard it, you sorry excuse for a—"

And then, to everyone's shock, he reigned himself in. The smoke and bluster that the prince had carried with him a year ago was carefully controlled, then banked, then extinguished. In its place was a unspoken, deadly earnestness.

"My people need the moon as much as yours need the sun. We're going to get the spirit of the moon back." His eyes bore into Sokka's. "I know what you lost, and I know you think you can't get it back. But maybe there's still part of her in the spirit world." His eyes lost focus, as if he were listening to someone only he could hear. "My uncle once told me that spiritual energy cannot be destroyed; it moves, changes form, or is reincarnated. I've heard the stories, Sokka. The spirit of the moon lived inside the Water Tribe princess. Zhao could no more have destroyed it than he could have destroyed the sun." He drew in a breath. "The spirit is alive, Sokka. And we have to find it before the world tears itself apart."

Sokka closed his eyes for a moment in remembrance. "That can't be true. If it were, why did La go on a rampage? Why didn't she just go and find her missing mate?"

"Because La had crossed over into the world of mortals. She'd made an irrevocable vow; they both did. They swore to live among the humans, and if one died, they would never be able to meet again. But the part of the moon that was in Yue never made that decision, because its energy was part of another soul. In essence, there wasn't one moon spirit; there were two. And that second one still has the power to cross back from the spirit world."

Katara's voice was skeptical. "And you know this because…?"

The prince drew himself up. "My sources are impeccable."

Silence.

A faint flush began to cover his cheekbones. "I've read about the ways of the spirits myself, in scrolls hundreds of years old!"

Katara tapped her foot. "And these scrolls were called…?"

Zuko mumbled something under his breath.

Sokka cupped his hand to his ear. "What's that, oh magnificent planner?"

"The…Tragedy of the Serpent and the Phoenix."

"Oh, I remember that play from when I was a little girl!" said Suki. "It was really popular in Kyoshi for a while, because it was written during her early years and…and…and you just based your entire plan on something you heard in a play."

Between his teeth, Zuko forced the words, "It's all we have to go on. If we get to the Spirit World, we have a shot a finding Yin and restoring balance. If it even can be, after everything that's happened."

Sokka opened his mouth to deplore the worst plan he had ever heard in his life.

But for some reason, the spirits had cursed him with an impetuous little sister who never knew to keep her mouth shut.

"We're in," said Katara. "Let's move before the Dai Li return." She brushed past Sokka, paused and looked up at Zuko briefly. "A play, hmm? I never would have thought you had it in you."

And, though Sokka was known for his imagination and insight, he could have _sworn_ he was hallucinating when Katara's eyes shone just a bit brighter before turning her head away.

He dropped his head into his hands. "I am _so_ going to regret this."


End file.
